Teachers Suffer Consequences for Challenging Traditional History

Chronicle Features, San Francisco
RELEASE DATE: On or After March 14, 1997
LATINO SPECTRUM by Roberto Rodriguez & Patrisia Gonzales

Teacher Nadine Cordova is an accused racist. She has, for example, taught
impressionable young minds about Cesar Chavez, the late leader of the
farmworkers' movement, whom many have likened to Gandhi, Martin Luther King
Jr. and other dangerous thinkers. Worse yet, Cordova wanted to teach her
students about tolerance of our country's various different racial, cultural
and religious groups.

As a result, at the end of February, she was suspended with pay from Vaughn
High School in New Mexico. Her specific crime? Teaching Chicano history.

Teaching ethnic studies has always been controversial because it challenges
the notion that history is simply the story of great white men and great
events, rather than the stories of the courage and struggles of ordinary
people. Today, however, critics of ethnic and women studies are going one
step further, alleging that the teachers of multicultural history are racist.

As we mentioned in another column at the beginning of the year, Cordova was
the sponsor of her local high school club, Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de
Aztlan (MEChA). Due to the hostile anti-Chicano environment on campus, it
has since been disbanded. Cordova, who has taught for 12 years, was ordered
by superintendent Arthur Martinez to quit teaching the "MEChA philosophy" and
to refrain from teaching about Chavez and using the "500 Years of Chicano
History" textbook. He deemed the curriculum racist.

The same action, for the same reasons, has also been taken against Cordova's
sister Patsy, who has taught at Vaughn High School for 23 years.

Vaughn, which was settled as a railroad town at the end of the 19th century,
"was built on the sweat of Mexican labor," says Herman Garcia, a professor at
New Mexico State University. In fact, the entire infrastructure of the West
was built on the backs of Chinese, Mexican, Native American, African American
and other immigrant labor. So it is totally appropriate for the Cordovas to
teach Chicano history, he says.

The racism of this region in New Mexico is such that many people of Mexican
or Indo-Hispano origin proclaim that they have Spanish, rather than Mexican
blood, says Garcia, who grew up in the area. This misidentification partly
underlies the curriculum debate at the high school, he says. "Many
Mexican-origin people say they're Spanish, French or Portuguese. Everyone
looks into a false mirror. I too grew up calling myself Spanish."

Jeanne Guana, director of the civil and environmental rights South West
Organizing Project, which distributes "500 Years," explained that after the
Mexican American War ended in 1848, people of Mexican origin faced lynchings,
land theft and virulent racism. Later, in times of economic depression,
people of Mexican origin--citizens and noncitizens alike--were deported en
masse. "That's why no one has historically wanted to identify as Mexican,"
she says.

As a result, many Mexican-origin people internalized the racism and learned
to despise all things Mexican, says Guana, who was also raised in Vaughn.
They equate being Mexican with being Indian, and to them, that's an insult.

That "500 Years" teaches this history of oppression does not make it racist,
says Guana. Quite the contrary. It helps open people's eyes--and many
students often tell her this with tears in their eyes.

University of Colorado's Evelyn Hu-DeHart, one of the nation's top ethnic
studies scholars, says that the efforts to prevent the teaching of ethnic
studies is tied to the "core knowledge" or "back to basics" curriculum
movement. It is a backlash against curricula that challenge standard
history. Instead of viewing those new curricula as expanding our knowledge,
many educators see them as dumbed-down education. When that new knowledge is
introduced, "standard [American] history loses its centrality, its primacy
and its supremacy," she says. "It's not the students who are afraid of that
curriculum, but rather the older generations. They feel that their world
view has been taken out from under them."

The debate over ethnic studies is not the first time our educational system
has been challenged. Last century, Ivy League students studied Greek and
Latin history. English and American literature was not deemed worthy of
study. Universities now teach English and American literature and the
academy is still standing. Similarly, the broadening of our intellectual and
cultural knowledge with ethnic studies can only strengthen our educational
system, not weaken it, says Hu-DeHart.

Nadine Cordova is not fazed by the action against her. She believes she is
on solid legal grounds and plans to sue if necessary. She feels the material
she uses in class benefits the students, and says, "If you're not teaching
relevant education, then you're not teaching."
In a sense, it's sad that it will perhaps take a court of law to determine
how relevant she is.

(Copyright Chronicle Features, 1997)

* Those wishing to obtain a copy of "500 Years of Chicano HIstory" - the
book, curriculum guide or video, should contact SWOP at: 211 10th St. SW,
Albq NM 87102, 505-247-8832 or